Alec Forbes of Howglen Part 50

Alec said nothing. Kate would not trust him then! He would not have thought much of it, however, but for what had pa.s.sed before. Would she have gone with Beauchamp if he had asked her? Ah! if he had asked Annie, she too would have turned pale, but she would have laid her hand in his, and gone with him.

"Gin ye want to gang up, than," she said, "I'll lat ye see the easiest road. It's roun' this way."

And she pointed to a narrow ledge between the descent and the circular wall, by which they could cross to where she stood. But Alec, who had no desire for Annie's company, declined her guidance, and took Kate up a nearer though more difficult ascent to the higher level. Here all the floors of the castle lay in dust beneath their feet, mingled with fragments of chimney-piece and battlement. The whole central s.p.a.ce lay open to the sky.

Annie remained standing on the edge of the dungeon-slope.

She had been on her way to see Tibbie, when she caught a glimpse of Kate and Alec as they pa.s.sed. Since watching them in the boat the evening before, she had been longing to speak to Alec, longing to see Kate nearer: perhaps the beautiful lady would let her love her. She guessed where they were going, and across the fields she bounded like a fawn, straight as the crows flew home to the precincts of that "ancient rest," and reached it before them. She did not need to fetch the key, for she knew a hole on the level of the gra.s.s, wide enough to let her creep through the two yards of wall. So she crept in and took her place near the door.

After they had rambled over the lower part of the building, Alec took Kate up a small winding stair, past a succession of empty doorways like eyeless sockets, leading nowhither because the floors had fallen. Kate was so frightened by coming suddenly upon one after another of these defenceless openings, that by the time she reached the broad platform, which ran, all bare of parapet or battlement, around the top of the tower, she felt faint; and when Alec scampered off like a goat to reach the bartizan at the other side, she sank in an agony of fear upon the landing of the stair.

Looking down upon her from the top of the little turret, Alec saw that she was ill, and returning instantly in great dismay, comforted her as well as he could, and got her by degrees to the bottom. There was a spot of gra.s.s inside the walls, on which he made her rest; and as the sun shone upon her through one of the ruined windows, he stood so that his shadow should fall across her eyes. While he stood thus a strange fancy seized him. The sun became in his eyes a fiery dragon, which having devoured half of the building, having eaten the inside out of it, having torn and gnawed it everywhere, and having at length reached its kernel, the sleeping beauty, whose bed had, in the long years, mouldered away, and been replaced by the living gra.s.s, would swallow her up anon, if he were not there to stand between and defend her. When he looked at her next, she had indeed become the sleeping beauty he had fancied her; and sleep had already restored the colour to her cheeks.

Turning his eyes up to the tower from which they had just descended, he saw, looking down upon them from one of the isolated doorways, the pale face of Patrick Beauchamp. Alec bounded to the stair, rushed to the top and round the platform, but found n.o.body. Beginning to doubt his eyes, his next glance showed him Beauchamp standing over the sleeping girl.

He darted down the screw of the stair, but when he reached the bottom Beauchamp had again disappeared.

The same moment Kate began to wake. Her first movement brought Alec to his senses: why should he follow Beauchamp? He returned to her side, and they left the place, locked the door behind them, took the key to the lodge, and went home.

After tea, Alec, believing he had locked Beauchamp into the castle, returned and searched the building from top to bottom, even got a candle and a ladder, and went down into the dungeon, found no one, and went home bewildered.

While Alec was searching the vacant ruin, Beauchamp was comfortably seated on the box of the Spitfire, tooling it halfway home--namely, as far as the house of its owner, the laird above mentioned, who was a relative of his mother, and whom he was then visiting. He had seen Kate and Alec take the way to the castle, and had followed them, and found the door unlocked. Watching them about the place, he ascended the stair from another approach. The moment Alec looked up at him, he ran down again, and had just dropped into a sort of well-like place which the stair had used to fill on its way to a lower level, when he heard Alec's feet thundering up over his head. Determined then to see what the lady was like, for he had never seen her close, or without her bonnet, which now lay beside her on the gra.s.s, he scrambled out, and, approaching her cautiously, had a few moments to contemplate her before he saw--for he kept a watch on the tower--that Alec had again caught sight of him, when he immediately fled to his former refuge, which communicated with a low-pitched story lying between the open level and the vaults.

The sound of the ponderous and rusty bolt reached him across the cavernous s.p.a.ce. He had not expected their immediate departure, and was rather alarmed. His first impulse was to try whether he could not shoot the bolt from the inside. This he soon found to be impossible. He next turned to the windows in the front, but there the ground fell away so suddenly that he was many feet from it--an altogether dangerous leap.

He was beginning to feel seriously concerned, when he heard a voice:

"Do ye want to win oot, sir? They hae lockit the door."

He turned but could see no one. Approaching the door again, he spied Annie, in the dark twilight, standing on the edge of the descent to the vaults. He had pa.s.sed the spot not a minute before, and she was certainly not there then. She looked as if she had just glided up that slope from a region so dark that a spectre might haunt it all day long.

But Beauchamp was not of a fanciful disposition, and instead of taking her for a spectre, he accosted her with easy insolence!

"Tell me how to get out, my pretty girl, and I'll give you a kiss."

Seized with a terror she did not understand, Annie darted into the cavern between them, and sped down its steep into the darkness which lay there like a lurking beast. A few yards down, however, she turned aside, through a low doorway, into a vault. Beauchamp rushed after her, pa.s.sed her, and fell over a great stone lying in the middle of the way.

Annie heard him fall, sprung forth again, and, flying to the upper light, found her way out, and left the discourteous knight a safe captive, fallen upon that horrible stair.--A horrible stair it was: up and down those steps, then steep and worn, now ma.s.sed into an incline of beaten earth, had swarmed, for months together, a mult.i.tude of naked children, orphaned and captive by the sword, to and from the troughs at which they fed like pigs, amidst the laughter of the lord of the castle and his guests; while he who pa.s.sed down them to the dungeon beyond, had little chance of ever retracing his steps upward to the light.

Annie told the keeper that there was a gentleman shut into the castle, and then ran a mile and a half to Tibbie's cottage, without stopping.

But she did not say a word to Tibbie about her adventure.

CHAPTER LIII.

A spirit of prophecy, whether from the Lord or not, was abroad this summer among the clergy of Glamerton, of all persuasions. Nor was its influences confined to Glamerton or the clergy. The neighbourhood and the laity had their share. Those who read their Bibles, of whom there were many in that region, took to reading the prophecies, all the prophecies, and scarcely anything but the prophecies. Upon these every man, either for himself or following in the track of his spiritual instructor, exercised his individual powers of interpretation, whose fecundity did not altogether depend upon the amount of historical knowledge. But whatever was known, whether about ancient a.s.syria or modern Tahiti, found its theoretic place. Of course the Church of Rome had her due share of the application from all parties; but neither the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, nor either of the dissenting sects, went without its portion freely dealt, each of the last finding something that applied to all the rest. There were some, however, who cared less for such modes, and, themselves given to a daily fight with antichrist in their own hearts, sought--for they too read the prophecies--to fix their reference on certain sins, and certain persons cla.s.sed according to these their sins. With a burning desire for the safety of their neighbours, they took upon them the strongest words of rebuke and condemnation, so that one might have thought they were revelling in the idea of the vengeance at hand, instead of striving for the rescue of their neighbours from the wrath to come. Among these were Thomas Crann and his minister, Mr Turnbull. To them Glamerton was the centre of creation, providence, and revelation. Every warning finger in The Book pointed to it; every burst of indignation from the labouring bosom of holy prophet was addressed to its sinners. And what the ministers spoke to cla.s.ses from the pulpit, Thomas, whose mode of teaching was in so far Socratic that he singled out his man, applied to the individual--in language occasionally too much to the point to admit of repet.i.tion in the delicate ears of the readers of the nineteenth century, some of whom are on such friendly terms with the vices themselves, that they are shocked at the vulgarity and rudeness of the _names_ given them by their forefathers.

"Ye ken weel eneuch that ye're a drucken vratch, Peter Peterson. An' ye ken weel eneuch that ye're nane better, forbye, than ye sud be. Naebody ever accused ye o' stealin'; but gin ye haud on as ye're doin', that'll come neist. But I doobt the wrath o' the Almichty'll be doon upo' 's like a spate, as it was i' the days o' Noah, afore ye hae time to learn to steal, Peter Peterson. Ye'll hae _your_ share in bringin'

destruction upo' this toon, and a' its belongin's. The verra kirk-yard winna hide ye that day frae the wrath o' Him that sitteth upo' the throne. Tak' ye tent, and repent, Peter; or it'll be the waur for ye."

The object of this terrible denunciation of the wrath of the Almighty was a wretched little object indeed, just like a white rabbit--with pink eyes, a grey face and head, poor thin legs, a long tail-coat that came nearly to his heels, an awfully ragged pair of trowsers, and a liver charred with whisky. He had kept a whisky-shop till he had drunk all his own whisky; and as no distiller would let him have any on trust, he now hung about the inn-yard, and got a penny from one, and twopence from another, for running errands.--Had they been sovereigns they would all have gone the same way--namely, for whisky.

He listened to Thomas with a kind of dazed meekness, his eyes wandering everywhere except in the direction of Thomas's. One who did not know Thomas would have thought it cowardly in him to attack such a poor creature. But Thomas was just as ready to fly at the greatest man in Glamerton. All the evildoers of the place feared him--the rich manufacturer and the strong horse-doctor included. They called him a wheezing, canting hypocrite, and would go streets out of their way to avoid him.

But on the present occasion he went too far with Peter.

"And it's weel kent your dochter Bauby's no better nor she sud be; for--"

Peter's face flushed crimson, though where the blood could have come from was an anatomical mystery; he held up his hands with the fingers crooked like the claws of an animal, for the poor creature had no notion of striking; and, dancing backwards and forwards from one foot to the other, and grinning with set teeth in an agony of impotent rage, cried out:

"Tam Crann, gin ye daur to say anither word against my Bauby wi' that foul mou' o' yours, I'll--I'll--I'll--worry ye like a mad dog?ye ill-tongued sc.o.o.nrel!"

His Bawby had already had two children--one to the rich manufacturer, the other to the strong horse-doctor.

Thomas turned in silence and went away rebuked and ashamed. Next day he sent Peter a pair of old corduroy trowsers, into either leg of which he might have been b.u.t.toned like one of Paddy's twins.

In the midst of this commotion of mind and speech, good Mr Cowie died.

He had taken no particular interest in what was going on, nor even in the prophecies themselves. Ever since Annie's pet.i.tion for counsel, he had been thinking, as he had never thought before, about his own relation to G.o.d; and had found this enough without the prophecies. Now he had carried his thoughts into another world. While Thomas Crann was bending his spiritual artillery upon the poor crazy tub in which floated the earthly presence of Peter Peterson, Mr Cowie's bark was lying stranded upon that sh.o.r.e whither the tide of time is slowly drifting each of us.

He was gently regretted by all--even by Thomas.

"Ay! ay!" he said, with slow emphasis, 'long drawn out'; "he's gane, is he, honest man? Weel, maybe he had the root o' the maitter in him, although it made unco little show aboon the yird. There was sma' flower and less fruit. But jeedgment disna belang to us, ye see, Jean, la.s.s."

Thomas would judge the living from morning to night; but the dead--he would leave them alone in the better hands.

"I'm thinkin'," he added, "he's been taen awa' frae the evil to come--frae seein' the terrible consequences o' sic a saft way o'

dealin' wi' eternal trowth and wi' perishin' men--taen awa' like Eli, whan he brak his neck at the ill news. For the fire and brimstane that overthrew Sodom and Gomorrha, is, I doobt, hingin' ower this toon, ready to fa' and smore us a'."

"Hoot! hoot! dinna speyk sic awfu' words, Thamas, Ye're nae the prophet Jonah, ye ken."

"Are ye the whaul than, to swallow me and my words thegither, Jean? I tell ye the wrath o' G.o.d _maun_ be roused against this toon, for it's been growin' waur and waur for mony a year; till the verra la.s.ses are no to be lippent oot them-lanes (alone)."

"What ken ye aboot the la.s.ses, Thamas? Haud ye to the men. The la.s.ses are nae waur nor in ither pairts. I wat I can come and gang whan and whaur I like. Never a body says a word to me."

This was true but hardly significant; seeing Jean had one shoulder and one eye twice the size of the others, to say nothing of various obliquities and their compensations. But, rude as Thomas was, he was gentleman enough to confine his reply to a snort and a silence. For had he not chosen his housekeeper upon the strength of those personal recommendations of the defensive importance of which she was herself unaware?

Except his own daughters there was no one who mourned so deeply for the loss of Mr Cowie as Annie Anderson. She had left his church and gone to the missionars, and there found more spiritual nourishment than Mr Cowie's sermons could supply, but she could not forget his kisses, or his gentle words, or his shilling, for by their means, although she did not know it, Mr Cowie's self had given her a more confiding notion of G.o.d, a better feeling of his tenderness, than she could have had from all Mr Turnbull's sermons together. What equal gift could a man give?

Was it not worth bookfuls of sound doctrine? Yet the good man, not knowing this, had often looked back to that interview, and reproached himself bitterly that he, so long a clergyman of that parish, had no help to give the only child who ever came to him to ask such help. So, when he lay on his death-bed, he sent for Annie, the only soul, out of all his pariah, over which he felt that he had any pastoral cure.

When, with pale, tearful face, she entered his chamber, she found him supported with pillows in his bed. He stretched out his arms to her feebly, but held her close to his bosom, and wept.

"I'm going to die, Annie," he said.

"And go to heaven, sir, to the face o' G.o.d," said Annie, not sobbing, but with the tears streaming silently down her face.

"I don't know, Annie. I've been of no use; and I'm afraid G.o.d does not care much for me."

"If G.o.d loves you half as much as I do, sir, ye'll be well off in heaven. And I'm thinkin' he maun love ye mair nor me. For, ye see, sir, G.o.d's love itsel'."